It’s been an eventful six-plus years since the ribbon was cut on the new 115,000-square-foot Daily’s Premium Meats bacon plant in Saint Joseph, Mo.

Besides dealing with a global pandemic that sent the entire meat industry reeling, the production focus at the new plant shifted from the original plan while a new sales strategy is expanding Daily’s brand nationally. In the past two years, leadership changes at the plant were made as demand for products has continued to soar and stakeholders make plans for expanding the plant in the next two years.

About a year ago, Joe Richmond transitioned from his role as chief financial officer at Daily’s to general manager. He joined the company in 2021 after working as a controller with Tyson Foods Inc., for over two years. Another new leadership addition was in 2022, when Kathy Berry was appointed plant manager. In 1994, Berry started as a production line worker at the Daily’s plant in Missoula, Mont., and worked her way up the ranks to plant manager there in 2021 before transferring to the Missouri plant about a year later.

The focus of the plant’s production from primarily foodservice at the outset to mostly retail was an opportunity to consolidate the fresh pork sales team and the Daily’s sales crew. The combined team is led by Chad Groves, senior vice president of global sales, marketing and innovation with Merriam, Kan.-based Seaboard Foods, which jointly owns Daily’s along with Triumph Foods, also based in Saint Joseph, just a stone’s throw from Daily’s. The new structure has simplified the sales of products and will streamline the process of selling new products in the future. Groves said it creates one unified sales pitch and one sales relationship to manage for products sold to retail or foodservice customers.

Shifting focus

Initially the plan was to start out with two foodservice processing lines when the Daily’s plant first opened and add four more of those lines as demand grew.

“Foodservice is what had been 95-plus percent of Daily’s business and we built this facility to extend that,” Richmond said. “Pretty quickly after the facility was built, we saw an opportunity to grow in retail,” which had previously been somewhat of an afterthought, he said. “Instead, we installed four retail slicing lines.”

Historically, Seaboard and its fresh pork products have been stronger in retail and the smallest part of the customer mix was in foodservice. Meanwhile, Daily’s 130-year history is rooted in foodservice, with less emphasis on retail. But that has changed significantly.

“The retail business has really been the focus for us over the last three years,” Groves said. “That’s where it made for a really nice marriage between the two teams to be able to overlap and leverage the relationships we had on both sides.

“It’s been a really nice harmony for us,” Groves said of the combined sales efforts. “So now, the team has leverage across all those platforms and all six plants,” which include Daily’s three plants, Seaboard Foods’ plant in Guymon, Okla., Triumph Foods’ facility and Seaboard Triumph Foods (STF) based in Sioux City, Iowa.

To read the entire report, see MEAT+POULTRY’s Bacon Report in the October issue: https://digital.meatpoultry.com/sosland/mp/meatpoultry-october-2023/index.php#/p/24.